19-year-old job seeker spends 2,000 hours building Skyrim mod

[OmniSkribe]

My experiences in the working world and my lessons from my college classes and my hours and hours and hours of playing games has never come close to giving me the ambition to do what Alex did. What he did is pretty damn amazing. Otherwise there would 10,000 kick-ass Skyrim mods as awesome as Falskaar. If I were an employer I would definitely snag this kid up.

But why? Do you feel that you lack creativity or something?

[Sillychan]

I think it's mostly that college still has more structure. Take this course, follow this guideline, do this objective, take these tests etc.

Completing a project of this scale without someone babysitting you shows a lot more motivation. Deviation from the norm, so to speak.

[ReconObserverCtrl5]

Being cynical is not fun. It doesn't do anything for people just taking shots at others. It doesn't get you anywhere to be cynical.
Good on him for getting a job by doing something that took quite a bit of work and dedication. I can only hope those who are so negative and sniping realize the futility of such actions. The gaming industry old guard and new is littered with people who do not have what you'd consider gaming degrees. It was started by people who literally wrote the games out on graph paper, and the hard working passion holds true today for many developers.

I am not saying to stop going to college and go make a mod, but I am saying that there is more then one way to reach a destination.

[Sal the Shieldhog]

I think it's mostly that college still has more structure. Take this course, follow this guideline, do this objective, take these tests etc.

Completing a project of this scale without someone babysitting you shows a lot more motivation. Deviation from the norm, so to speak.

Basically this.

He taught himself all the things we're learning in college, without professors and tests to help him out. Then he applied that, and combined it all into one mod.

And it's not like it's some minor thing. If what I'm hearing is right, what this guy has done is an entire development team's work for about the equivalent of a DLC, in a year. That's more than enough to get him a job, at least somewhere, if not where he wants. THe industry as a whole would be stupid to pass this dude up, it'd be like J. K. Rowling all over again (not saying I like Harry Potter, but she went through more than a few editors before being published. I'd hate to be one of them after HP started blowing up).

[Zarghol]

If you ever think a piece of paper is worth more than a great portfolio for any creative job on the entire planet... Good luck on that. You go to school to learn how to do what this guy did, then hopefully get internships to hopefully one day get noticed by some person in a position to give you paid assignments. This guy instead kicked in the door to the boss of the boss of that person in every game company out there, and they loved it. You don't like people not doing it by your book? Too bad, it's the people who skip in line who end up ahead.

[Tychus]

He taught himself all the things we're learning in college, without professors and tests to help him out. Then he applied that, and combined it all into one mod.

He taught himself foundational history, art, science, literature and humanities? Unlikely. Does he actually know anything about agile development, game design theory or project management as informed by working within formal goals, as well as time and budget constraints? Probably not much.

I'm not suggesting this isn't an impressive effort - it is - but people vastly overstate things sometimes. Is this a good avenue to get one's foot in the door? Certainly - people have been hired from the mod community for ages... I remember making Doom levels as a kid and reading about it all the time, even then.

[Sal the Shieldhog]

He taught himself foundational history, art, science, literature and humanities? Unlikely. Does he actually know anything about agile development, game design theory or project management as informed by working within formal goals, as well as time and budget constraints? Probably not much.

I'm not suggesting this isn't an impressive effort - it is - but people vastly overstate things sometimes. Is this a good avenue to get one's foot in the door? Certainly - people have been hired from the mod community for ages... I remember making Doom levels as a kid and reading about it all the time, even then.

Let's be honest here. Those things are important, yes. I'm sure he was working as much as he could with the time and money he had to get this done (2000 hours in a year is about 8 hours a day, with minimal breaks and the weekends off, if I remember correctly from the article).

He taught himself what he needed to get the game done and polished. And not only that, he did it all himself. This wasn't a team of developers and artists and actors and managers bringing it all together. This is a huge and ambitious project done by a single 18 year old kid trying to show he has what it takes to get a job.

Do you really need to know the history of something to create the code needed to craft a game? No, you don't. All you need to know is how to code and apply that code correctly to get it to do what you want. Does he need to know the history of all kinds of software to create the project? No, he needs to know the ins and outs of what he's working with, what it can do, the quality of it, making sure it works good and looks good without bugs.

Much of what is learned in college is fluff. And yes, I'm currently in college and I acknowledge this.

No matter what way you spin it, what this kid has done is impressive. He taught himself and I'd himself the work of an entire team of game developers. How can you say that isn't impressive?

[nightfalls]

What do you think? Do you think this 19 year old kid should get a job at Bethesda for creating this mod of his?

Perhaps or somewhere similar (depending on their job openings, of course), but not because of the hours, but rather the results. Assuming the mod is what the OP cracks it out to be, it shows both skill and leadership in terms of putting the quality together, that's stuff to be admired everywhere.

Basically enough that you wouldn't be able to just do it in a basement for a month.

[Tychus]

In other words, he saved time and money not sitting in classes being lectured on things largely unrelated to his job?

Just sounds like efficiency to me.

The point of a well rounded education is that it makes you a stronger individual creatively (in a variety of measures, from artistically to general problem-solving and problem-modeling), because you have a larger base of knowledge from which to draw. Knowledge is power.

If pure time-until-job-function-capable "efficiency" was the only measure anyone cared about, universities would be scarce and trade-schools with apprenticeships would be nearly the only thing people utilized. That said, trade schools are rather undervalued in my opinion.

How can you say that isn't impressive?

Well... :P

I'm not suggesting this isn't an impressive effort - it is

[The Casualty]

What a great idea for a portfolio. Good for that young man.